Reaching the Isshinryu India Headquarters!

1) Arrive first at BESANT NAGAR

2) Ask for the way to KALAKSHETRA COLONY.

The main road to the colony which houses the world famous dance school - KALAKSHETRA starts at the juncture of four roads. Of the other three roads one leads to the Velankanni Temple, one to Besant Nagar bus stand and one to an area called VANNAN THÙRAI. The road adjacent to hotel Karaikudi/Dhabba and Reliance store is the road you must take. This is your first landmark.

3) Now keep an eye on the number of lefts. On your fourth left is your second landmark - A police booth. Do not take a left here! Proceed forward and take the next left. There is a small Xerox shop here. This is your second land mark.

4) This small road takes you past film actor Vikram's house and past another left and a right. Do not turn here. Proceed forward to a small stretch which is the "worst kept road in Chennai due to a dispute". This HORRIBLE ROAD is your third land mark.

5) The best part of this horrible road is that it is small and ends soon. Now turn right. This road is called Coastal Road.

6) Keep your eyes to your right and proceed. You can't miss our building. You will mistake it for a church, a temple or a museum! It's in fact all three. We worship sculpture here. We have a Sai Baba mini temple here plus a statue of Pope John Paul II. We also have a big collection of statues here sculpted by HU. The door number which you won't find on our building is T 16/2. There are various boards outside at various times depending on what activity the focus is on. Sometimes you may find no banners here as a product of very strong winds that blow from the sea which is right beside.

7) Once you have located us, please give Shihan a call. Shihan can surprise you by coming out and leading you in or at times will make you wait in the reception.

WAITING TO MEET SHIHAN

If you are a prospective student of Karate, Shihan has the usual ritual of making you wait. Shihan believes that if a student is really keen, then he/she will display patience in meeting the Teacher. If you have other priorities in life on that day, other than meet your Teacher, then forget about learning Karate. Shihan Hussaini is notorious for making some aspirants wait for many many hours. There is a famous Telugu star who was made to wait for several days before Shihan met him and several weeks before he taught him. A very successful movie was later made and acted by this star about how he was made to wait for Shihan and after several refusals he was finally accepted into the Isshinryu brotherhood. Its a simple philosophy "you need to prove your commitment to become a serious student of Karate". Nobody is forcing you to join.

MEETING HU

1) Please put your mobiles on silent when you enter. Shihan likes being called 'HU!' so you can address him as HU. Your ordeal is not over when you are finally inside Shihan's office room. He is invariably busy on calls, working on his huge iMac or entertaining other people too. Don't get frustrated. All best things don't come easy. If you catch him in his dojo working out, it's a good idea to sit and watch him work on his Katas or Shoot with an array of bows or be in "Zanshin" with some weapon he is practising with!.

2) Once Shihan has his attention on you, you can ask any or every doubt about Karate and the course you are going to do. He is most patient in answering any and every query you have.

3) Shihan might spend little to lots of time with you depending on how interesting your presence is.

4) Shihan loves animals so don't be surprised if cats cross the table during your meeting or you are constantly disturbed by an African Grey Parrot (practising to talk mimicking some sound or simy whistling), or if a huge Golden Retriever dog barges in to wag his tail hard. He is harmless!

5) Shihan will decide if he wishes to teach you and if he does, he will tell you when to start.

Time for TRUTH to turn LETHAL

Hoiz!

This is Shihan Hussaini.

Finally, after 15 years of serious planning and postponing, our official website is up today.

At least the first page.

The reason for the inordinate delay was the desire to make this the best site ever; with graphics, videos, thousands of photographs, documents and data of thousands of karatekas who learnt Isshinryu from me.

But nothing was good enough for me.

I tried to make the site better and better.

And procrastination prevailed and inordinate delays!

The several web designers and the student volunteers who worked day and night, the professional artists we employed for three years to convert thousands of photographs into line drawings and the Karate students who toiled to convert data into digital form ended up in despair as I was firm on "class". It has to be the best website in the world, "OR NEVER!"

The pursuit for excellence killed the initiative.

With a dozen other priorities happening, the web site was relegated to last priority and then it was nearly abandoned.

Every Tom Dick and Harry in martial arts in India crowded the web space with their own sites. Some were sham sites, some were downright silly and others were "cut paste" and "ready made template" sites!

It's an open secret in the world of Karate how many "black sheep" who feign loyalty for some years to their Sensei suddenly disappear from the school on some pretext or the other, put up a site, follow up with visiting cards, some posters and start off a new school.

They will then go to the internet, get a dozen certificates from the happily obliging XYZ internet Dojos, and then claim to be the only true master in that style in the world.

Today, log into Google and you will have a few thousand sites which offer Dan certificates on the net and belts on air mail!

No Karate school, no style, no dojo is exempt from this.

India has been a hunting ground for scores of so called "Senseis" who will descend from "Abroad" on the invitation of one of these "internet masters" for an air ticket, hotel accommodation and a few hundred dollars.

These masters will conduct a "one day" workshop and declare that all that the earlier master taught was "thrash" and only what he is teaching is the holy gospel.

Then this master will be passé and another will come by. Your own student for ages, who learnt, broke bread with you, was a family with you for decades will join hands with all your opponents and declare that he is the supreme master of your own style. Then there will be associations and political people administering them. Your student will lick the boots of such politicians for a share in the pie of "association" recognition and posts.

In India this bane is colossal. Specially in the South which is know as the mini Okinawa as there are a hundred dojos of every style on earth here.

Isshinryu in India has been hit by this malice only recently. "Isshinryu India" can take pride in the fact that we were a united body from 1977 for a little over 25 years.

We grew from strength to strength, competed in International and World Championships and came back with dozens of laurels and championships, spread Karate to the nook and corner of India, did hundreds of spectacular Karate demonstrations, novel self defence courses, taught Karate to the handicapped, the visually impaired, the speech and hearing impaired and yes, even christian nuns.

We became the most popular Karate school in Tamil Nadu and in India.

Which school in India can have in it's records details of over 1700 black belts, over three hundred thousand students, and 554 dojos?

Every single Karate student, black belt, Sensei, Renshi or who ever in Isshinryu in India has either learnt Karate either directly from me or from students trained by me.

NO ONE CAN DENY THIS AFTER THIS WEBSITE GETS ACTIVE!

We will put every data on this site. Documents and photos can't cheat.

This is a website of the truth about Isshinryu in India. This is going to be a bold site and will rip up the skin of anyone who spreads canards about us.

Thousands of photos, documents, technical data will be loaded on to this site. Keep logging in every day.

We will grow every day, every week, every month.

As more and more information is loaded, this site will get stronger.

But what this site won't be is:

It won't be a site that dishes out Dans, Certificates or Titles for a few dollars or more.